On Baseball; Minaya and Wilpon Make the Mets Players

By MURRAY CHASS

Published: November 29, 2005

OMAR MINAYA had already gained a reputation among his baseball brethren as an aggressive general manager, and yesterday he demonstrated his aggressiveness twofold.

He introduced Carlos Delgado, last week's acquisition, to a gathering at Shea Stadium, and even before Delgado left the building, Billy Wagner became this week's acquisition. Maybe that should be this week's first acquisition. Who knows what Minaya has in mind for the rest of the week.

Make that Minaya and Fred Wilpon. They are a team. It's Minaya's fertile mind and aggressive behavior and Wilpon's money. They are a dangerous combination, Minaya's mind and Wilpon's money. Dangerous for the rest of the division, if not the entire league.

It would be premature to label the Mets the favorite to win the National League East next season. It would be foolish to assign that role to anyone other than the Atlanta Braves. Fourteen consecutive division titles, especially the 14th, provide enough of a reason to pick the Braves routinely.

But if any team is going to be in position to supplant the Braves as king of the mountain in 2006, it should be the Mets.

If the Mets had held a news conference yesterday to announce the Wagner deal, Minaya would have said he wasn't done operating on the 2006 Mets. He acquired his power-hitting run producer, and he secured his closer. But there is more work to be done in the bullpen, and though Minaya has said that Kazuo Matsui is his second baseman, he would not hesitate to upgrade that position or to trade Matsui to the Red Sox in a package for Manny Ramirez.

But the Mets didn't hold a news conference for Wagner, because his signing won't become official until he passes a physical. That step is the newest wrinkle in the signing of free agents or the execution of trades. It's like the fat lady singing. They are not done until the doctor sings, or signs off on the sound health of the players involved.

The Mets knew last Tuesday they were getting Delgado, but the trade didn't become official until late Thursday night.

The physical thing isn't new this year, but it hasn't been a requirement for too long. Signings and trades become publicly known because clubs report them to the commissioner's office after an agreement is reached, and the news spreads throughout baseball.

Wagner's decision was disclosed in an additional manner. His agent, Bean Stringfellow, called his former team, the Philadelphia Phillies, yesterday afternoon to say that Wagner had decided not to return. This is where the Mets' money entered the picture.

Pat Gillick, the Phillies' general manager, told reporters on a conference call that he was willing to give Wagner, a 34-year-old left-hander, $10 million a year for three years but would not go to a fourth year. The Mets gave him a guaranteed $43 million for four years and added an option for a fifth year. Wagner will turn 38 halfway through the fourth year.

''A long-term contract sometimes becomes an unhappy situation,'' Gillick said, ''because if the player does well, he feels he's underpaid, and if he doesn't do well, the club feels he's overpaid. It doesn't give you any flexibility.''

The Mets snatched Pedro Mart?z a year ago by giving him a guaranteed fourth year, a level to which no other team was willing to go.

For many years, Wilpon was not eager to spend money, certainly not the way George Steinbrenner has in making the Yankees the most obscenely paid team in sports history. When Nelson Doubleday was Wilpon's partner, it was Doubleday who wanted to spend money on players. It was Doubleday who was responsible for the Mets' signing of Mike Piazza to a $91 million contract seven years ago.

But Wilpon has reasons for spending money to make the Mets a winner. It's not only his baseball team he needs to fortify, it's also his new cable network. Just as the Yankees benefit from their YES Network, to the tune of $150 million a year, the Mets have created their own cable venture, and Wilpon is willing to spend against future earnings.

The better the Mets are, the better their chances of winning will be, and the more they win, the more viewers they will attract and the more revenue will flow through the door. Just as he knows that he has to spend money to make money, Wilpon knows he has to spend money to improve the Mets. They are his primary programming for SportsNet New York.

Wilpon has also presumably figured out that even if he has to overpay by a year on a multiyear contract for certain players, the excess expenditure is worth it. If Mart?z gives the Mets only two more seasons like last season, his $53 million contract will have been worth it. Carlos Beltran, on the other hand, has to hit more productively for the next several seasons to make his seven-year, $119 million contract worthwhile.

The guess here is that the presence of Delgado, his friend and fellow hitter, will enable Beltran to blossom next season in ways he didn't demonstrate last season.

In his first two off-seasons as the Mets' general manager, Minaya has added Mart?z, Beltran, Delgado and Wagner. The aggressive manner in which he pursued those free agents impressed them and helped lead to their decisions to sign with the Mets.

The aggressive way in which he pursued and executed the Delgado deal pre-emptively kept Atlanta and Boston away from Wagner and impressed Wagner, showing him the Mets were serious about winning next season.

Minaya's moves have weakened two division opponents: the Phillies, who finished five games ahead of the Mets last season, and the Marlins, who tied them for third.

Minaya's next major move may not further weaken those two teams, but the acquisition of Ramirez would stretch the gulf between them even wider.

Photo: First baseman Carlos Delgado, a power-hitting run producer acquired in a trade with the Marlins, was at Shea Stadium yesterday. (Photo by Barton Silverman/The New York Times)